James_Miller comments on [Link] The Coming Plague - Less Wrong

3 [deleted] 12 October 2014 02:37PM

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Comment author: James_Miller 12 October 2014 05:54:16PM *  5 points [-]

without any attempt to understand the other side at all, this seems irrelevant to LW.

I don't agree. If Cochran is right than either the CDC is lying because it feels we can't handle the true (i.e. it's better to let <10 Americans die of Ebola than to inflict lots of economic harm on West Africa), or fuzzy refuse-to-accept-tradeoffs-thinking infects CDC analysis. (I'm not competent to judge if Cochran is right.)

Comment author: Manfred 12 October 2014 06:59:45PM *  9 points [-]

Barring the omission of the CDC being wrong for mundane reasons, the possibilities you listed (CDC right, CDC wrong and lying, CDC wrong and biased) are in fact all the possibilities. Reading this article does not appear to have actually restricted what you think could be true about the world, at least not enough to be worth mentioning!

I mean, yes, the possibilities you mention are interesting and LW-relevant. But this article actively avoids any actual information about why the CDC is against travel restrictions - possibly a consequence of the author's extreme confidence that they're right.